I attack the Catholic Church and Calvinism with my usual reticence.
Yet I went to some trouble to be baptized in the Melkite Church.
Everyone in my family has left the Methodist “Church.” Yet I bitch about the Catholic Church and condemn Calvinists all the time.
This is not a contradiction. It is what the mountain climbers say about why they do what they do: “I climbed Mount Everest because it was THERE.”
Attacking almost anything that calls itself a church is a waste of time. How could you criticize a mainline Protestant denomination? Specifically, how could you attack their position on morality?
They don’t HAVE a stance on morality. If you already know what Mommy Professor says about it, you know what the latest Church Conference said, they just said it in the name of religion instead of Social Progress.
I attack Catholic doctrines because they HAVE doctrines. When I attack Calvinists I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am giving the mainline Presbyterians hell because they are hardly aware that such a man as Calvin even existed.
If there were a Methodist CHURCH my family would still be members of it. We have a number of my circuit-riding grandfather’s sermons and in my youth we were amazed to see “The Devil,” in caps, appear regularly in them. Even in the 50s none of us had ever heard Satan mentioned in a sermon.
I used to tell people that I spent six and a half days a week working in politics, so sometimes I went to church on Sunday morning to see what the other side was doing.
None of this will surprise an American. Americans have always been very religious and very anti-clerical. In plain language, we go to church and we bitch about it.
Americans bitch about their churches all the time. But for Europeans I have taken around, the marvel was that there are so many churches in such young buildings, and even more so that those churches were built and are maintained privately. Europe’s churches are almost all relics maintained at state expense.
It is funny for people today to hear a line from an old movie where Lee Marvin is being baptized and the preacher doing it says he wants to “save him from the Presbyterians.” In my own family, my Baptist mother agreed to raise us in the Methodist Church, but only if we could delay baptism until we were the age of Consent, a basic Baptist tenet.
All this sounds weird today. Today there is only Ecumenicism.
But the generations that bitched at their own and other churches also FOUNDED those churches. Today churches are sort of included in new suburban areas. They are rebuilt to modernize.
I cannot climb a mountain which is not there. I cannot bitch about a doctrine that I cannot FIND.
Someone once told me that it is frightening to follow a loved one into the Emergency Room when there is shouting and someone is pounding on their chest.
But there is another thing that is worse. Following a loved one into the hospital when all is calm.
When all they can do is move the sheet up a few inches.
Catholics and real Calvinists are important to our history and I attack them and beat on their chests.
But what is worse is when someone like me does NOT attack a church. The soul has departed.
#1 by Dick_Whitman on 12/11/2010 - 6:42 am
I was raised Methodist (United Methodist) as well and even attended Methodist summer camp. I was “Confirmed” in 8th grade. The Methodist church is one of the more “liberal” Protestant denominations. We had hunted-houses during Halloween (which made the Baptists squeem) and I had my early experiences with girls at MYF meetings/summer camp. These are good memories. I never really liked the church stuff though. I still go to Christmas evening candlelight service to make my Mom happy.
#2 by BGLass on 12/11/2010 - 9:36 am
I met a jew who had gone into voodoo. They were running around NYC at the time, doing various voodoo rites and nearly getting arrested for it, and they explained to me that I had no idea!— the voodoo people were al brown and really got with the spirit unlike any others on earth and shook and everything when they prayed, and this person could take me to religious events that would blow my mind! So I asked how it stacked up to WV snake handlers, which the person hadn’t heard of, then said I wasn’t sure, b/c I was studying with jews, and even jews had a new moon ceremony: did they have THAT in voodoo?
Well, she had never been that kind of jew, so she hadn’t heard of any new moon rite every month in Orthodoxy. All she knew about was the rabbis on t.v. in brooklyn doing bad stuff to little kids, people’s organs, and money, and so she wanted to distance herself, and that the real motivation of her voodoo stuff.
So, most religion nowadays is just distancing oneself from the t.v. image of whatever. (Lowbrow protestants were all born and bred in the movie deliverance; Catholics are stupid, mindless go-fers for the government and can’t think for themselves and do whatever the pope tells them —just like on Fox Five and they are best suited as cogs in the wheel, working for the military empire as some mindless missionary soldier, or or some corporation with memos that can tell them what to wear on business friday or whatever they have; Highbrow protestants only want to suck up to jews like the Corporate Catholics, so the voodoo people may have the “real spirit,” and the orthodox jews appear to be people selling organs.
This is what people really know about “churches.”
Imo, it’s best to always ask any professed “Believer in God” three questions about their beliefs and daily practice. One in a thousand people might know something about the history of the sect they supposedly adhere to, it’s theology, how it sits in reference to other sects and other religions in regards to theologic questions, philosophy, etc.
You have to give it to them straight: “It should be embarrassing to be such a stupid poser. You are spineless and have been accused on t.v. of being bad somehow, and that is why you are in the religion, not b/c you have any beliefs at all. Are they even in a church that matches their own real belifes they don’t usually talk about? In fact, there’s probably a real sect out there for them, somewhere.
The accusations have so cowed everyone that the only thing with any real traction is the NICE PEOPLE CHURCH. Where you go and moralize and hand over any money you managed to make.
Maybe the CHARITY CHURCH (very good for the welfare state.) Like, Dennis Leary and O’Reilly were talking about their belief in not paying taxes (they’re rich and have rights; the rich are people too!) But they are good Catholics from the Northeast and Believe in giving their money away to charity (whatever they chose to keep will probably allow them to live well, still, one imagines). But the point is, they belong to the NICE PEOPLE CHARITY CHURCH.
It’s a shame. Before jews or anyone else goes into voodoo –like the one I mentioned who saw brown folks shaking and thought that was what “Thee Spirit” was— they really should examine their own motivations— otherwise, it’s there for all to see and should be embarrassing.
#3 by beefcake on 12/11/2010 - 10:43 am
I go to religious events fore the “soul” 😉 reason of spreading the mantra.
I hit them with the mantra, and its amazing how they ALL fall into one main issue.
But JESUS luvs us awlll!! ***eyes well up sad, because of jesus****
Me “well thats wonderfull, and he surely does not want Genocide commited. I mean NOBODY is FLOODING AFRICA with NON-BLACKS and saying you have to ASSIMILATE and INTERMARRY, and INTERBREED because JESUS loves us all.
They only tell us that Jesus intends all White countries to be blended out of existence, and use his love for an excuse of Genocide against us in white countries. Nobody is trying to use “jesus love” as an excuse for Genocide anywhere else.
#4 by Dave on 12/11/2010 - 11:20 am
I don’t worry about people whose convictions are genuine (e.g., not psychotic or sociopathic).
Even if they are opposed to my own, I can bring them around.
It is these hordes of self-centered people who deceive themselves so dispassionately that are the problem.
It is all these people who make no effort to really know anything.
They go through life and they were never really there.
That is a large part of the electorate. All these people who can never be trusted with any decision. Politicians fight over them incessantly.
#5 by AFKANNow on 12/12/2010 - 2:24 pm
This issue, and Dave’s response in particular, drive a much more substantial point home, and that is the importance of spiritual development, religious Institutions, and Race.
ALL of the extant religious social orders are designed to keep your Mind, and by extension your Spirit, trapped in their rather materialistic construction. Thus, the New Elect are called Pastors, and we are opnely referred to as Sheep!
Contrast this with one of the great writers of mystical science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke. I won’t deal with the issues he raised in the 2000 series.
I will deal with his book, “Childhood’s End.”
In this book, the advanced technolofy race – who looked like black Satan – had “educated” the Children of Earth through a new school system to accept them.
LAter, the Children of Earth changed, spiritually and psychologically, going with the Minds where the Aliens could not go with their starships, and eventually transformed the Earth, using it as a tool to expedite their Racial spiritual evolution.
The Aliens watched in humbled awe, as they could not acccess the Creative Forces the Children of Earth used to literally free up all of the energy of the Earth to power their Race’s Spiritual Transformation.
This is where Institutional Christianity has become the hireling of our Racial Enemies. By acting to limit “Christian” deeds to lower order temporal issues, always with the equalitarian goal in mind, Institutional Christianity has lost its power to inspire Man to reach for and harness the Transcendent.
Incidentally, history of Christianity textbooks are silent as to trhe great transformation the North offered a decaying, decadent Christianity.
We need such a transformation today, to strip the detritus from the practice of Institutional Christianity.